To Washington he wrote two weeks later a most amusing letter, starting with a dissertation on crop rotation and "a certain essence of dung, one pint of which would manure an acre according to Lord Kaims", but not forgetting, in a negligent way, to slip in at the end a piece of political advice: "to try to extricate ourselves from the event of a war; at the same time to try to rouse public opinion in Great Britain and the only way to do it being to distress their commerce." But he added once more, "I cherish tranquillity too much to suffer political things to enter my mind at all."[318] This was nothing but the non-intercourse policy then debated by the government and of which Jefferson had evidently heard. When his letter reached the President, a solution had already been adopted and Jay had sailed for England on the mission which was to end with his signing the famous or infamous treaty. The summer went on without any new letter from Jefferson. A letter of the Secretary of State, asking him whether he would not consider lending a hand to the President in the present emergency, found him in bed "under a paroxysm of rheumatism which had kept him for ten days in constant torment." Then he emphatically added, No circumstance will evermore tempt me to engage in any thing public.... It is a great pleasure to me to retain the esteem and approbation of the President, and this forms the only ground of any reluctance at being unable to comply with every wish of his. Pray convey these sentiments, and a thousand more to him, which my situation does not permit me to go into.[319]